Punishment

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An Excerpt from the Book by Joey Raines

Rain was coming down like the world was ending, each drop smashing against the windshield like tiny bombs. The wipers couldn't keep up, squealing and scraping as they fought back and forth in time with Luke's pounding heart. He was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had gone white, hands slippery with sweat even though the October cold was seeping through his car's broken heater.

The bourbon from the bar still burned going down his throat, but it hadn't done shit to kill the pain tearing through his chest like a wild animal. Three double shots and he could still see Tera's face with perfect, agonizing clarity. The way her expression had changed from confused to understanding to something much worse when she cornered him with all the evidence spread across their kitchen table like crime scene photos.

Hotel receipts from the DoubleTree downtown. Credit card bills showing dinners for two at places he had never taken her to. Text messages he thought he had deleted forever, dug up from some digital graveyard by her tech-savvy brother. All of it arranged in neat little piles, organized with the same careful detail she used for everything else in their life.

"Get out. Just get out and don't come back."

Her words kept playing on repeat in his head, each one like a knife twist. She hadn't yelled or screamed. That would have been easier. Instead, she had used that quiet, broken voice of someone watching their world fall apart in real time. The look in her eyes when she had asked how long it had been going on, when she wanted to know if he had ever really loved her, when she finally figured out that their whole marriage was built on lies.

It wasn't just betrayal. It was worse than that. It was watching love die right in front of him while he stood there like an idiot, mouth hanging open, scrambling for words that didn't exist.

"I can explain," he had tried to say, but Tera had just held up her hand.

"Don't. Please don't make this worse by lying some more."

The worst part was watching her cry. Not angry tears, not rage crying. The quiet, defeated kind of crying you do when something precious dies. She had loved him. Actually loved him. And he had taken that pure, honest thing and poisoned it with his selfishness, his weakness, his need for something he couldn't even put a name to.

Luke floored it, watching the speedometer climb past seventy. The engine growled like it was as angry as he was. Seventy-five. Eighty. Eighty-five. Everything outside turned into a blur of rain and darkness, headlights and taillights streaking by like falling stars.

The bridge came into view through the storm, concrete barriers shining wet in his headlights like giant bones. He had crossed this bridge a thousand times. Going to work, taking Tera out to dinner in the city, and grocery runs. Never really looking at it, never thinking about the black water rushing toward the ocean way down below.

Tonight felt different. Like an ending.

He thought about calling her, trying one more time to explain, to say sorry, to somehow fix what he had broken. But what was the point? How do you apologize for destroying someone's ability to trust? How do you take back months of lies, of looking someone in the eye and feeding them carefully crafted bullshit while thinking about another woman?

The concrete wall was rushing toward him, solid and unforgiving through the storm. He could still turn the wheel, swerve back into his lane, pull over, call a cab, and deal with whatever came next, like a grown-up would do. He could try to rebuild, try to earn forgiveness he didn't deserve, try to prove that the guy Tera fell in love with was still buried somewhere under all the cowardice.

But Luke knew better. He had been breaking things his whole life, letting other people clean up the mess. His parents' marriage barely survived his teenage years. Got fired from his first real job when his boss found out about the creative accounting he had used to cover his mistakes. Lost college friends when they figured out he was the one stealing money from the apartment fund. Same pattern of selfishness and weakness going back as far as he could remember.

Tera was the best thing that ever happened to him, and he had destroyed her the same way he destroyed everything he touched. She deserved better than some asshole who has throw away her love for a few months of cheap thrills with a coworker who didn't give a damn about him beyond the excitement of screwing a married guy.

The speedometer hit a hundred. The bridge was seconds away, those concrete barriers coming at him like the walls of a grave. For just a second, Luke caught his reflection in the rain-streaked windshield, all distorted by water and darkness. His own face stared back with eyes full of self-hatred and grim determination, mouth twisted into something that could have been a smile or a scream.

This was the first honest thing he had done in years. The only choice that he felt wouldn't hurt someone else, and wouldn't dump another mess in someone else's lap. Tera could tell people it was an accident, could get on with her life. She could find somebody who actually deserved her love and wouldn't piss it away like he had.

He had let the crash come to pass. The smash sounded like the end of the world, metal and glass and concrete coming together in a symphony of destruction that felt like it lasted forever and was over in an instant. The steering wheel crushed his ribs, the windshield exploded into a million pieces, and Luke felt himself flying forward before something inside just... stopped.

Pain hit him, sharp and bright, then this weird floating feeling, like he was hovering above the twisted wreck of his car and his life. He could see the mangled metal, steam rising from the busted engine, rain already washing his blood off the broken glass.

Then quiet.

Then, darkness deeper than anything he had ever known.

Then something else. Maybe peace. Maybe just the absence of everything he had ever been.

And then he felt himself go to sleep, not his body, his soul.

Want to read what happens next?

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The full story continues in Punishment: The Loop, now available in paperback and eBook format.